PLAME

I refuse to construct any puns relating to the name of Joe Wilson's outed CIA covert agent wife.

This looks to be a huge story. I remember when it broke back in July, and had been wondering why it didn't get more traction then.

Here's an ABC News story on the current matter, for those of you who've not come up to speed on it. (my mother, for example, hehe)

What it all boils down to is that two "senior administration officials" outed former ambassador Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a covert CIA agent, leaking the info to conservative commentatoralist Robert Novak, among others, as an apparent act of revenge after Wilson revealed the blatantly forged and shoddy evidence of Bush/Blair's claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa. From Novak's July article:

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. (emphasis mine)

And in doing so, those two officials broke the law. This law, in particular, banning the outing of covert operatives. The reasons for the law are pretty clear, as unmasking agents could damage national security or result in loss of life, not to mention compromise intel operations, and so on, and so forth.

A Washington Post article that also hit the stands in July, same time as Novak's column, referred to the two leakers as "top white house officials". So going by both that classification, and Novak's, we know that this wasn't the fault of some administration basement-dweller; there are only a shade more than a dozen "senior administration officials". So from here on out, this looks like a game of whodunnit. Just the sort of stakeout that blogs were born for. Kevin Drum has his list, whittled down by deduction and likelyhood that such officials could gain knowledge of covert agents:

Dick Cheney — Vice President
Karl Rove — Senior Advisor to the President
Condi Rice — National Security Advisor
Steve Hadley — Deputy National Security Advisor
Andy Card — White House Chief of Staff
Dan Bartlett — Assistant to the President for Communications
John Gordon — Homeland Security Advisor
Scooter Libby — Vice President’s Chief of Staff

Another suspect who could be added to this list is former Press Secretary Ari Fleischer who, coincidentally, officially resigned the day that the leak was made, July 14th.

Remember, it's not just one, it's two of them. What's most interesting about this? It is likely that much of the administration knows exactly who did this. Nevertheless, Condi's "this is a Justice Dept matter" stuff at the press conference this morning is par for the course for an administration that has made stonewalling a cornerstone.

And of course: Imagine how big the shitstorm would be if Clinton had done this...

Speaking of Clinton, let's put this burgeoning scandal in perspective. The Wilson/Plame scandal looks like the reverse of the Clinton scandal template. Back then, the VRWC etc wanted to pin crimes on Bill and Hillary, but the only things lacking were the actual crimes. This is why we had blank-check Ken Starr fishing expeditions, the right wanted a "what" to go with their "who". Flash-forward to the current situation. What we have now is a reversal: We know that a crime has been committed, but all that's left to know is which two senior administration officials were behind it. We have the "what", and now the only question is "who". Obviously, the "what" is the more important part, the "cattle" to the "hat" that is "who", in investigatory matters.

Most of the blogs linked on the left side of this page should have coverage of the situation. I suggest Marshall for starters.